The Box Is King; The humble shipping container has revolutionized commerce, for better and worse, by cutting costs and offering sealed anonymity to all traders, legal or not.

Byline: Christian Caryl

The city of Busan, South Korea's largest port, feels like a room crammed with oversize furniture. Apartment buildings and hotels crowd into a narrow strip between steep hills and a deep harbor. There is no view of the water from the claustrophobic main street, even though it follows the harbor's edge, because the road is blocked on both sides by steel shipping containers in basic red, green and blue, stacked two or three high like children's blocks.

One's car is surrounded by tractor-trailers hauling containers, and occasionally traffic grinds to a halt as long railway trains creep across an intersection hauling--you guessed ...